I opened my eyes, and saw Ryl looking straight ahead, confused and cross eyed, trying to see up at the gold scepter bent violently around his skull. A steady stream of syrupy red blood poured from the point of contact, and I felt it dripping down onto me, burning hot against my heaving chest.

  Ryl turned, very slowly, just as Penny released the scepter from her grip, and let it clatter to the stone floor at her side. It rolled in my direction, stopping mere feet away from me. I felt a sudden surge of desire, a need to reach over and grab it, if only I could somehow, miraculously, manage to find the strength to do so...

  Ryl looked absolutely furious, and yet, as before, he seemed to consider this latest development little more than the mildest annoyance, a slight irritation, rather than anything to seriously interfere with his plans. Penny, on the other hand, looked absolutely terrified, backing away slowly, as Ryl stepped toward her, breathing hard, coming threateningly near...

  “And there she is. The bitch who started it all. How could I have forgotten about you, little darling? Oh, yes... You and I could have a lot of fun together. You see, the death that you very nearly received would have been a merciful one. Relatively speaking, anyway. Now, though. Now, I plan on taking my sweet, sweet time with you. Making sure that every last slice of you I take counts for all I can get out of it...”

  It was at that moment that my hands closed around the end of my father's scepter. With a desperate force I flung it forward, swiping it as hard as my exhausted arms could manage under Ryl's ankles. Ryl swore, stumbling backwards, falling off balance before he had the chance to transform, and hurtling toward the ground.

  And then, all at once, there was a sickening noise, one which I hadn't even been expecting– KLHH!– until I looked down at the ground, to the spot where Penny's busted cage lay just beneath Ryl's wide, staring eyes...

  He'd landed straight on the spikes protruding from the edge of the cage, falling onto the metal surface with such force that they sank into the back of his neck, and deep into the base of his skull. The blood spilled profusely from the wounds, and Ryl lay there for a moment, unblinking, but his body shaking, his jaw trembling, as though trying desperately to speak.

  He said nothing, however.

  After a moment, his entire body went still. His eyes continued to glow, those two red beams staring forever out into space, reminding me inevitably of my father.

  An eerie calm seemed to fall over everything.

  I sat there, absolutely astonished– at once, it felt like a never-ending chapter of my life had come to a close, yet I could still hardly believe that such a thing could be remotely possible.

  Only at the sound of Penny's footsteps drawing near me did I look up at her. She was staring at Ryl's lifeless body, as disbelieving as I was for a moment. Then, to my great surprise, she looked up at me, and actually managed to smile. She cracked dryly, through a bloodied lip, “Well, what do you know? The King of the Dark Ones, brought down by a girl...”

  My heart was still racing. I was still struggling to comprehend what had just taken place. But somehow, the sight of Penny at that moment, smiling at me, still able to smile after all that had just occurred, relaxed me tremendously.

  I smiled back at her, very much in spite of myself. “And by a human, for that matter,” I added, on the verge of laughing myself– maybe it was wrong to think this way at the moment, but I could only imagine how Ryl would react if he was still alive to fully absorb the details of his own death...

  “Well okay,” said Penny, stooping down, and helping me unsteadily up off the ground. “You might have helped just a little bit...”

  “Are you alright?” I asked her, still grinning, though it was clear from the way she was speaking to me that there wasn't a thing wrong with her, aside from a few shallow cuts.

  Penny scoffed. “I should be asking you that question!” she said, having a look at me, and she did have a point.

  “As long as you're okay,” I said in a low voice, “I'm okay...” I leaned toward her, just on the verge of getting ready to kiss her. But something stopped me– the deafening silence that was suddenly resounding throughout the entire stadium, the fighting, it seemed, to have drawn to an abrupt and total halt.

  I turned my face from Penny's, and stared instead out into the crowd. All eyes were upon me, or upon Ryl, lying there beside me. The Dark Ones, they must have realized, were suddenly without a leader, right square in the middle of fighting a losing battle against my brothers and the Earthdragons.

  And here, at last, then, was my chance to end this.

  Stooping down, I reached for the bent and bloody scepter lying on the stone floor at Ryl's side. I lifted it slowly up into the air, holding it majestically aloft over the crowd. And immediately it was clear, as all eyes were upon me, that not a soul would dare to attack us now. The battle was won. The Dark Ones, at long, long last, had fallen. My father's kingdom had been restored, once again.

  My eyes met those of Fri and Nol, who smiled at me from among the wreckage of the stadium. Then I turned, and smiled once again at Penny, who looked at me expectantly.

  “Well, Nurse Penny Forrester?” I said to her. “How would you like to be the Queen of the Protectors?”

  Upon asking the question, her beautiful face beamed so brightly at me that I nearly had to squint.

  Epilogue

  Penny

  “Hello to you all. Protectors. Dark Ones. Earthdragons. And, yes. Humans. We all go by many names, and by many distinctions. But I stand before you today, hoping, that for the first time, in a long time, we might attempt something that is long overdue. That we might put aside those distinctions. Those, as well as all of our differences. Whether near, or from far away. Whether you agree with me and what I have to say, or whether it may take time to convince you, and hopefully make you see that there is a better way than how we've all been living.”

  I watched, teary eyed, as Ynder stood before the crowd. The crown on his head, as it should have been long before now. A motley assortment of beings seated before him, looking up at the throne that Ryl had so recently vacated, and that had once rightfully belonged to Ynder's own father.

  I lifted a hand to my swollen belly, gently swollen with pregnancy. Hoping that somehow, Ynder's growing child might understand, or at least in some way absorb the importance of this moment. I hoped, and I knew, that someday he would be every bit as proud of his father as I was.

  “Seductive though they may have been, the ideas of Ryl and his minions were never going to be sustainable. They were never going to help us survive. They only served to turn us against one another– and that they did, with harrowing success. I daresay, Ryl would have seen every last one of our kind killed, by human hands or, more probably, our own, before it ever crossed his mind to admit he was mistaken, or to even think about changing tack.”

  He was silent for a moment, allowing his words to sink in. Then, at length, he continued.

  “But I propose a different way. A way free of the violence, the close-mindedness under which we have been living up until now. We simply cannot surrender to the temptation of violence against the human race, as Ryl was encouraging up to the point of his death. Human beings are our friends. Our neighbors. Our partners...” He cast a glance over at me, sitting on the chair beside him, and I smiled shyly, slightly nervous in the spotlight. “Our families,” he added meaningfully, then turned back to the room at large.

  “Nor can we continue to hide ourselves as we have done. Ashamed of who we are. Hiding our powers, our fantastic abilities, out of a sense of fear. Believing ourselves persecuted. It is true, assuredly, that there will be those among the human population who will fear us. Who will refuse to understand us– though no more, I submit to you today, than we have refused to understand them, up until now. But ignorance will only extend as far as we allow it, and insofar as we continue to feed it, as we have so unwittingly done until now. But one need only look toward the love which I have found, and the love between my younger brother Nol, his wife Alicia, and their beautiful son Keo, for proof that it is entirely possible for us to understand one another, and to live in harmony together.

  “I know there will be times when it won't be easy. I make no claims to the contrary. But as your new King, I say to you today– I have every intention of dedicating myself to that cause. Of ensuring that our kind is able to grow and to thrive, both alongside and among humans, rather than in spite of, and secluded from them. Peace and prosperity– both of these things, I believe, are within our reach. If only we can find the courage necessary to reach out and procure them. If only we can find the courage to work together, and set the petty differences of the past aside.”

  There was a long silence after that. I sat there nervously, eyes scanning the crowd, more than a little nervous that Ynder's first speech as King had fallen on deaf ears. That the people who were now his charge were uninterested in anything he had just said, and had only sat through it out of a sense of duty, of begrudging obligation.

  But then, just as these worries were about to get the better of me, I heard the sound of hands clapping. Just one or two sets of them at that point. But then, rapidly, it spread throughout the entire packed hall. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief, and actually became a little bit emotional as people began to stand, rising out of respect for Ynder and the throne.

  Ynder looked as relieved as I did, though he'd maintained his composure the entire time. He turned to look at me, grinning, and I beamed at him– certain that the Protectors had just coronated the greatest leader of their people, that they might ever have hoped to know.

  –––––

  I wanted Ynder, desperately, by the time the celebrations of the night had subsided. No sooner had we made it through the door of our chambers than I launched myself at him, pressing my lips to his with a feverish desperation, catching him slightly off guard, but the look in his eyes not at all a disappointed one.

  “I need you, my King,” I whispered to him between kisses, and he wrapped his arms tightly around me, pulling me in, tasting my tongue on his own. I hoisted up one leg around him, loving the pressure of his rock-hard cock up against the front of my dress, needing him to take me, needing him to put himself inside me, before I went insane with desire. “You were so incredible out there,” I breathed at him, a few seconds later, trying to provoke him. “It made me want you so badly... Seeing you up there, in front of all those people. Exercising your authority...”

  I hot, creeping sensation worked its way up along my spine as I said these things, reliving the intensity in my mind, my nostrils flaring as I did so.

  Ynder pulled slightly away from me, smirking, an eyebrow raised.

  “Turned on by power? Careful now... You might start sounding like a Dark One pretty soon, if you aren't careful...”

  I knew he was joking, and I bit my lip flirtatiously at him, looking at him with lustful eyes.

  “What can I say? A girl wants what she wants,” I breathed. Ynder smiled at me, then reached out, placing his hands on my waist. Seizing me in a way that I adored. Making me gasp.

  “Well, then... What kind of King would I be? If I didn't give the people what they want?”

  He pressed me forward, nearly lifting me off my feet, and edged me over to the bed. He folded me down across the surface of the bed, and peeled me out of my dress. I watched with hunger as he stripped out of his shirt, revealing the glistening planes of his muscles, the injuries of his battle against Ryl since largely having healed.

  He draped himself over me, and began to kiss me. My lips. My face. My neck. The tops of my breasts. He slid my bra down, and slid each of my nipples into his mouth in turn, suckling hungrily on me, bringing his teeth down, evoking a dizzying pleasure that spread throughout my entire body.

  I grew lightheaded, my eyes fluttering, then I promptly stiffened, at the touch of his fingers cascading along my body, swiping downward, beneath the frilly lace of my panties...

  He pressed up into me. My eyes clenched shut, and my mouth fell open. I lifted my ass up from the bed, knees shaking as he fingered me. Exploring my folds. Sliding his digits knuckle deep into my pussy, evoking such intense, sudden waves of pleasure that I couldn't even immediately react to it. I couldn't even make a sound...

  Then, with my knees in the air, he drew his fingers back out of me. He wrapped them, instead, around the lace of my underwear, peeling up from my waist, sliding them up, then down along my legs, and at last casting them over the side of the bed.

  I looked down at him, expectantly, excitedly, my aching body settling slowly back down onto the surface of the mattress. He locked his eyes on mine, and slowly pushed my legs apart, exposing my open body to the cool, delicate air of the room.

  He leaned forward very slowly. He pushed out his tongue. He buried his face in between my thighs.

  I drew in a long, devastated breath. I held it, and held it. Then I let pass from my lungs like air from a balloon, with a deep, terrible shudder.

  His tongue melted inside me. It slid around the lips of my pussy, then pressed in deep, exploring me as far as he could. He licked, and lashed, and tasted me. His head began to move, to bob and to weave. He gripped my ankles in his powerful hands, using them for leverage. He put his entire body into eating me, the gorgeous, writhing muscles in his back tensing and easing as he moved, the sight of him turning me on worse than anything as he licked me clean, the heat intensifying, growing beyond anything I could possibly handle.

  The pleasure grew more and more severe. My body actually ached, as I was brought again and again to the point of eruption, of sheer devastation, then gently eased back down again, stopped just short of my breaking point.

  Desperate for some control, I shot a hand down toward Ynder's nodding skull. I slid my fingers through his hair, and closed them tight around him, my wrist bobbing steadily along with his movements. Somehow, this only made the experience more intense– the feeling I was now in control of him, and every bit as responsible as he was for the waves of ecstasy flooding over me as he worked his tongue through my flesh. The pleasure building, building. The euphoria intensifying. His mouth sucking back on me, pressing closer and more firmly against that most sacred of spaces.

  And that was when I felt it. The sacred release. The violent burst of pleasure, the utter devastation of my resolve.

  I screamed.

  Every muscle in my body tightened, contracted, spasmed.

  My knees sank together hard around the sides of Ynder's neck. I held him as close to me as I could, as waves of orgasm pushed through me sweeping through my entire body, devastating me beyond words. I felt an unexpected, but intensely pleasurable spurt of liquid between my legs, actually squirting from the agony of climax, dripping onto Ynder's tightly suctioned lips, and my enthusiasm only causing him to pull back harder, to crave me even more than he already did.

  I lay there, shivering, overwhelmed by sensation, by desires fulfilled, yet somehow awakened more feverishly than ever– wanting so much more, now that the carnal beast within me had been stirred.

  I fluttered back down to the bed, after God knows how long. Then, very slowly, Ynder drew his face back out of me, leaving me in a state of desperate loneliness for a matter of moments– though this was promptly made up for by the sight of his glistening lips, his light beard shining from the fruit of my pleasure.

  He leaned in slowly, and kissed me, making me taste myself on him. I wrapped my arms greedily around him, and let one hand fall, sliding down his pants. I seized his cock, and loved how hot, how hard it was against me. Dripping his essence across my palm, cool against the heat of his shaft, and flowing in such abundance that there could be no doubt of his want for me, very nearly rivaling my own.

  I drew my pelvis up to him, rubbing my open legs against his bulge like an animal in heat, praying that he understood. Praying that he knew how desperately I was needing him in that moment, and that he would prove himself a merciful King, by putting me out of my misery.

  And in the end, as I knew he would, he did precisely that.

  His hands on my waist, he turned me over on the bed, lying me down on my stomach. Then he lifted me into the air, ass up, my legs spread out and waiting desperately for him. I heard the sound of his pants unzipping, then toppling over the side of the bed. I reached up between my legs as I waited, hooking to fingers over my opening, stroking my clitoris as I anticipated him.

  And then I felt him. Shoving his cock up into me. His hot, dripping shaft sliding up against my fingertips. Pushing inside me. Stretching me out as tight as I could get. Filling me, long, hard, thick, and deep. Easing into my g-spot, and making me cry as he touched down inside me, the sensation a fuller and more satisfying one than I might have imagined.

  I let out a low, swelling moan, as he settled himself in my heat. His hands drawing up to the spread cheeks of my ass. His fingers hooking into my flesh, maintaining a firm grip on my buttocks, claiming me as his own.

  “God, I'm so thankful to have you as my Queen,” he seethed, clearly enjoying the heat of my body around him, and I tightened my pussy around him, gratified by the shudder I felt run through his entire body as I did so.

  Slowly Ynder drew back, and then threw himself up into me at twice the speed of his entry. I moaned as he touched down again, but already he was pulling back out, his shaft drenched after only the second pump, and only about to get a hell of a lot more so.

  He began riding me. Throwing himself into me from behind. His muscles enveloped me, crushing down. His grunts of pleasure rang in my ears, which were already ringing, from the deep, fluid sliding of his body into mine. The powerful blows as he pounded my pussy, hammering my g-spot, the friction of his flesh as it sank into mine like nothing I could think to compare it to.

  He leaned himself in over me, working his way in deeper as he did so. He placed his hands on mine, pinning them to the bed, and fucked me harder still, his beard bristling against my neck, my breasts bouncing with each bestial thrust, and my cries of sincerest ecstasy becoming louder and louder, with each passing second, each movement of his body into mine.

 

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